Melvin Stacy Coffey

In many ways, Melvin Stacy Coffey was the most interesting man in the world. He was a chemist, an electrical engineer, a telemetry expert, a pilot of small (and sometimes quite large) aircraft, an Army veteran, an accomplished scuba diver, a cliff diver, a photographer, a bongo drum player, and an excellent Latin dancer. He also traveled extensively, visiting almost every state in the U.S., every country in Central and South America, and many countries in Europe and Asia.

As a teenager, Mel served in the Civil Air Patrol in Louisiana. During basic training in the U.S. Army in Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, he was assigned the same bunk where Elvis Presley had slept. As a NASA engineer in the 1960s, he worked intensely on the Apollo space program and became friends with Roger Chaffee, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, and Ed White, the astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire in 1967. Mel was working at Cape Canaveral the night the astronauts died.

Mel was born on July 16, 1939 in Lynchburg, Virginia while his parents were there on vacation. He spent his earliest years in Cleveland, Ohio, until his family moved to Houma, Louisiana, where it was normal for children to attend school without wearing shoes. When he was 8 and 9 years old, Mel would take a pirogue boat out onto the bayous by himself at night and gather as many water moccasins and rattlesnakes as he could into sacks. Then he would ride his bike and deliver the sacks to a man who paid $25 a pound for rattlesnakes and $35 a pound for water moccasins. The man was grateful to have the snakes so that he could milk them and create antivenom, and young Mel was grateful to have nearly $100 cash in his pocket on a regular basis in the 1940s.

Mel’s family relocated to Metairie, Louisiana when he was about 10, and he lived in Metairie and New Orleans until he graduated from high school and left the area to serve the U.S. Army. While serving in the Army, he worked on Nike missile internal guidance systems in Huntsville, Alabama, and White Sands, New Mexico. Mel studied chemistry, mathematics, and physics at Tulane University and New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts. He got his start working for NASA after landing a job with Chrysler Corporation’s Space Division at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. NASA hired him to work on Saturn boosters, and he later got transferred to Cape Canaveral to work on the Apollo space program. Mel’s role in the Apollo program and his friendship with the astronauts who died in the Apollo 1 fire are the subject of an entire chapter in the book “Guardians of the Right Stuff,” which was published in 2019.

Over the years, Mel went on to work in engineering jobs at Lockheed Electronics, Raytheon, TRT Telecommunications, and General DataComm. Mel moved his family to Largo, Florida in 1978 when he got a job at Paradyne.

A highlight of Mel’s life was meeting — and falling madly in love with — a fun-loving Italian woman with a big laugh named Esther. They met in New Orleans and got married there on April 3, 1965. Mel and Esther had many adventures together — first in New Orleans, then in Cocoa Beach and Cape Canaveral, Florida, and then overseas in Germany and Italy, where they lived for several years.

In 1971, Mel became a dedicated Christian and symbolized that dedication by water baptism. He remained active as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses for more than 51 years. He loved talking about the Bible’s hope for the future with all sorts of people in all sorts of situations.

Mel died at age 83 on July 20, 2022, exactly two months after receiving an unexpected diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia. He did his best to keep attending Christian meetings on Zoom and sharing his Bible-based hope with his caregivers right up until the very end.

Mel is survived by his daughter and son-in-law, Laura and Michael; his son and daughter-in-law, Eric and Amanda; two grandsons, Dylan and Tyler; two great-grandchildren, Amelia and Joseph; two sisters, Marsha and Glynis; and many in-laws, nieces and nephews. He is preceded in death by his wife of 48 years, Esther, and his parents, Raymond and Mary Ann Coffey.

A celebration of Mel’s life will be held at 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 6 at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses at 2000 Trotter Road in Largo, Florida.